hexagram
by irnan
Summary: Six things that never happened to Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala. companion piece to "hexaptych".


_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** sequel-slash-companion piece to "hexaptych"._

**six things that never happened to Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala**

**I.**

Anakin woke in darkness and warmth, gasping for air and shaking helplessly. Someone put a hand on his chest; there was an ache at his left arm as if an IV were inserted there, and a woman's voice said, warm and soothing, "Hey, hey, it's all right. You're safe now. You're free of the carbonite."

"Carbonite," he repeated, and shivered when his voice rasped so much he could barely recognise it. "Where am I?"

"Safe," the woman said. She had a Coruscanti accent, and though it was coarser than Obi-Wan's there was still a measure of familiarity to that lilt that made him feel calmer. She was also a Force sensitive, strong but untrained, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd sensed her before. "On board the _Millennium Falcon_. We're taking you to Yavin on the orders of General Kenobi."

"Obi-Wan," Anakin murmured, letting himself relax. He still had no idea what was going on, but he could tell she wasn't lying about bringing him to Obi-Wan. Although, interestingly, there was a spike of annoyance and a sense of longing to be free of – what? Some kind of obligation to Obi-Wan?

He shook off the thought and concentrated on the more important matters, opening his mouth like a child for the cup of water she offered him.

"I can't see."

"Hibernation sickness. Your eyesight should be back within a week at the most with the right treatments."

"Right," Anakin said. "That's good news. Now for the important stuff."

He was taking no chances. There was a darkness in his memory, darkness and hate that he didn't want to look too closely at yet but he knew meant danger, and for all he knew she was a part of it, and that was why he felt he knew her.

He caught her wrist in his right hand, the Force guiding him, and she hissed with anger; suddenly, the water cup was gone and something sharp was digging into his ribs.

"Listen, friend, your precious General is blackmailing my brother, our friends and I into getting you safely out of Imperial territory, but if you threaten me, I _will_ kill you, and damn the consequences."

Anakin grinned his most savage, wolfish grin. "Tell me where my wife is."

"Your wife," the woman said. For a moment still she hesitated, and then the knife was gone. She understood family, Anakin sensed in that instant, and let go of her wrist.

Maybe they weren't so different.

"She's still under. Apparently her body was torn up pretty good before His Vileness had you frozen; we've done what we can for her, but my guess is the docs'll put her in a bacta tank for a day or so after we arrive."

Reaching out in the Force, Anakin could sense the truth of her words: Padmé was near, her Force presence strong, but she was in pain and unconscious still.

"What happened to her?" the woman asked.

"She..." Anakin paused, thinking back: his last memories were – _darkness pain being dragged across a lab of some kind yellowred eyes peering down at him put him in Captain a firefight in Padmé's apartment, the Sith lightening that had torn through him_ –

Suddenly, everything wrenched to one side and slotted into place.

"She gave birth," he said numbly. "We sent them away... he was coming for us, he would have taken them, used them... we sent them away."

The woman sucked in a breath. "I'm sorry," she said quietly.

Anakin clenched his fists in his lap and turned his head away from where he sensed her presence, but he suspected she could tell he was crying.

They sat in silence for a while, and then she laid a hand on his wrist – his left, human wrist. "Listen, we weren't even told your names when they gave us the mission," she said. "I'm Leia Temple. And you and your wife are...?"

**II.**

When Luke entered the room, Father was sitting in his hyperbaric chamber, black cloak spread around him, legs outstretched. The lights glinted on his armour and boots, and not for the first time, Luke wondered how tall Father had been without the suit, what he'd looked like, which of them it was that shared his eyes.

The mask turned towards him.

"Well?"

Luke held out his new lightsabre silently. It floated from his hand to Father's, who turned it over and inspected it carefully, finally inclining his head in that gesture that should have been a nod.

"Excellently done, Luke."

Luke tried and failed to hide a grin. "And Leia?"

"You are the first. Her lightsabre is not yet complete."

Speaking of... as Luke clipped his own new blade to his belt, he saw Father's red-bladed sabre lying on the table to his right. He cocked his head at it curiously, and then said, soft and hesitant, "And... yours?"

Father turned to look at it, the sound of his breathing very loud in the quiet room. "I think," he said, as quietly as he could, "when this is done, I will have no need of another."

The doors slid open again before Luke had time to worry about what he meant, and Leia entered, dressed in grey and black like her brother. Luke smirked at her.

"Beat you."

"You're still not older," Leia said. "Just precocious."

Father held out a hand. "Show me, Leia."

She passed it to him, smiling: smaller and lighter than either of theirs, it looked dwarfed in Father's heavy gloved hands, but he returned it to her with a sense of pride in his Force presence.

"_Very_ good."

"The blade is blue," she said to Luke, who grinned a little.

"Green."

"So..." Leia said slowly, looking at Father.

He dropped a hand to the armrest of his chair and surveyed them both, touch of resignation to his Force presence and a hint of pride and maybe even amusement. "I take it you intend to insist on the original agreement to retrieve your smuggler," Anakin said.

The twins exchanged a look.

"Absolutely," they said in unison.

**III.**

And in the end, this was what it came down to: the Rule of Two was clear on the structure of the Sith Order, and it was plain that the Emperor had no more intention of changing it than the Jedi Council had of renewing their Code to allow for the attachments and fears of a nine year old slave boy, and so it was settled with a gleeful smile and a self-congratulatory cackle: they would fight, to the death, and the victor would face their father.

Vader had no need of the Force to sense their intentions, the bond between them, their love for one another that ran deep as bone and thicker than blood. He had glimpsed it at Bespin when they had come for Solo, the Princess and the Wookiee, when Leia, bruised and beaten, had kissed her smuggler goodbye and been struck down by his men, when Luke had fought him in the halls of the city in the clouds until, half-trained still and weakened by his sister's pain weighing on him, he had been defeated.

The year they had spent in hiding from him had done nothing to weaken that bond; if anything, it had grown stronger as they did.

They would turn on the Emperor together rather than raise a hand to one another, and he would destroy them both.

And then Vader knew: only if he permitted it to happen like that.

**IV.**

She stood at the top of the steps before the Palace, waiting for him: the wind was cold and biting, but she neither flinched nor shivered nor even tied her hair back. He loved to see it loose and free, draped over her shoulders and framing her face.

It was not entirely proper, of course. On her homeworld, a Senator with hair unbound in public was cause for a scandal, but this was not her homeworld, and she was no mere Senator.

The steady tramp of the Emperor's personal legion filled the Plaza, and the people were cheering, for he was marching at their head, on foot and in black as always, coming straight towards her. She fancied she could see his smile already, tilted and mischievous, feel the touch of his hands, taste his kisses.

Had she truly ever _believed_ she would get him back? Or had it all been desperation and fear of loss that had kept her by his side in those early days? She couldn't remember. It had been a long road, there was no denying it, and the guilt still plagued them both sometimes, for what he'd done and what she'd turned a blind eye to, but eventually he had returned to her so completely that all the hurt of that first year or more was more than made up for. And they _had_ brought justice, as he had promised her, sweeping away the corruptions and the misuses of Palpatine's rise to power, remodelling the courts to make them more independent, returning many (but not all) legislative powers to the Senate step by step.

Only the Armies of the Empire were still under his complete personal control, and the Imperial Knights, of course. The Rebel Jedi had denounced them as Dark Side followers and traitors to the Code, but he had laughed at the accusations and stated flatly that the Knights served the Light as truly and completely as the Jedi, and perhaps even more so: for the Knights at least could safely claim that they, unlike their Jedi brethren, had no fear of the Dark.

Ah, what did it matter what the Rebels thought? Their numbers dwindled year by year as the truth of his words was shown in every action he undertook and every policy she introduced to the Senate. It took a lot of _work_ to hate an Empire that had fulfilled all its promises and brought the peace and justice the galaxy deserved.

He was half way up the steps by now. So sunk in her own thoughts had she been that she had not realised that their children were not with him, but when he saw her frown he smiled, hurrying the last few steps and coming to a halt a step below her.

"Your son and daughter have their Knighthoods, milady," he said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. "I gave them command of the Fleet for the return to the shipyards."

"Wonderful news!" She was smiling, proud and delighted. They must have been Knighted on the battlefield; already a part of her mind was planning a celebration and an official ceremony.

"Indeed. And their brother?"

"Banished to his room until he catches up with his studies. I daresay he is hanging out of a window as we speak, desperate to see your return."

He laughed softly. "Too much like his father."

"Which reminds me," she said, teasing. "How has his father been?" touching her fingers to his jaw: stubble, and a fading bruise. There were more important things to him than parade-ground neatness at all times.

"He has missed you every day, milady."

"As I've missed him?"

He laughed again, cupping her face in his gloved hand and drawing her closer. "More," he murmured before their lips met, and the loudest cheer of all went up from the crowd as they kissed in the sight of all Coruscant. The wind whipped her red skirts around both of their legs as he gathered her into his arms, and she slid a hand into his gray-streaked hair and clung to him, elated to have him home with her once more.

**V.**

Kenobi gasped when the blade slid between his ribs, hand coming up to catch weakly at Vader's wrist, but he brushed it off with a flick.

"And you thought giving them to her family was a good idea," he said softly. "What happened? Did you take them from her as she lay dying, and then repent of it?"

"An- Ana-kin..."

"That name no longer has any meaning for me," Vader said flatly, watching the body collapse to the floor.

The streets of Theed were dark and quiet; the children had already been brought aboard his shuttle, ready to leave. Vader quickened his footsteps, eager to be with his son and daughter once more.

**VI.**

"You can't name her after me," Anakin said, looking down at the sleeping newborn in his arms. "That's not fair to her. She should have her own name."

"She was born on our wedding anniversary," Padmé said. "That's a _sign_. It wasn't even her due date, and I want to name her after you."

"But..." Anakin said. "I mean. I'm not exactly the easiest person in the world to have as a Dad, let alone a namesake – Luke, you can attest to that first part, right?"

Luke laughed at him from his perch at the end of the bed, Nathan nestled in his lap. "Oh, you're a terrible father, Dad," he said promptly. "All the homework and the teaching me to fly and the way you never let anyone have any fun _at all_..."

"I think it's an awful idea," Leia said. "We'd always be calling her Ani and then you'd never know which one of you Mom was yelling at."

Anakin looked up and glared at her. She grinned back, unrepentant, while Luke and Padmé laughed and Nathan climbed over his mother's legs to poke his little head over his father's arms and frown down at his baby sister.

"What do you think, Nat?" Anakin asked. "You're on my side, right?"

Nat tilted his head to one side, looked up at him, and then said, very seriously, "I'ma call her Nya."

"Short for Anya," Padmé said and nodded. "See? Even your _three year old_ son thinks it's a good idea."

"Oh, come on," Anakin said. "Are you _sure_ you wanna inflict this kind of burden on her?"

"_Yes_, Dad," the twins chorused, exasperated, and Padmé reached out to cup their youngest daughter's head gently and smiled at him, slow and loving.

"She couldn't have a better," she said.

"Father, or namesake?" Anakin grumbled.

"Both," his wife told him.

He smiled in spite of himself.


End file.
